Real estate is an attractive investment category — and also a risky one. Owning physical real estate can provide attractive returns, but a lot can go wrong: tenants can leave in the middle of the night, pipes can burst and markets can change without warning.

For years, many investors did not associate small-cap stocks with dividends. Even today, the Russell 2000 Index and the S&P SmallCap 600 Index, two of the most widely followed gauges of U.S. smaller companies, yield an average of 1.2% on a trailing 12-month basis.

Investors have gotten used to weak yields in many corners of the market. The dividend yield of the S&P 500 as a group is roughly 2.0%, and the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond doesn’t offer much more at just 2.2% yield.